February 2009

February 25, 2009

A couple technical snafus had to get worked out, but finally, a recording of the January 8 A Few Zines panel at Studio-X is online.

Catch the dulcet tones of moderator Kazys Varnelis, listen to Luke Bulman on shopdropping tactics for publishers, Mark Shepard on digital media, Felix Burrichter on making architecture sexy and entertaining again, and myself waxing poetically about anarchist print shops in Berkeley and the smell of fresh ink. Stephen Duncombe gives a fantastic paper on zine culture as a foil to pervasive capitalism and how that changed with online publishing. It's good stuff.

February 21, 2009

This is the last week to see A Few Zines: Dispatches from the Edge of Architectural Production at Studio-X. The show closes on Saturday, February 28. There's been so much good feedback: artist Karen Finley took her students, Abitare blogged us, as did the Architects Journal.

Grafting: Publishing and Practice comes at a time when the economic
crisis is wreaking havoc on both the architecture and publishing
professions—shelter magazines closing, new construction stalled out. Speakers from a wide range of architectural media: blogs,
journals, zines, and magazines, will look
at the state of architectural media, consider its role in practice,
and explore future publishing models.

February 13, 2009

Even in tough economic times, there's still room for some vicarious real estate. A little architectural burlesque.

So, with that preamble, I'm excited to link to Undoing the Cover-Up, a profile on the home of Natalya Kashper, partner in Brooklyn's own DUB Studios. (Shout outs to the other partners: Michael Piper and Gabriel Sandoval.)

The 7,200-square-foot space started out as a Pop-art bachelor pad (the previous owner's tasteful rhinestone fireplaces didn't make it into the story) and was stripped down to reveal the building's 1890s bones. I feel a Duchamp reference somewhere in that last sentence.

The design is stunning. I lust after the space. It haunts my dreams. I could fit seven to fifteen Tiny Houses in it.

So, without further ado, my first outing with the Grey Lady's Thursday Home section:

NATALYA KASHPER sat in her minimalist living room, a light-filled space made rich with rough brick walls, a sculptural masonry fireplace and wooden ceiling joists. She looked out of the arched windows, framed in deep wood casements, and took in the view.

“I remember coming to SoHo with my mom and thinking, ‘This is so beautiful,’ ” said Ms. Kashper, who grew up in California. “SoHo is the epitome of an old American city.”

That might explain her instant attraction to the 7,200-square foot loft, which occupies the entire top floor of a landmark red-limestone building at the corner of Wooster and Broome Streets.

Ms. Kashper is one of the three architects who formed DUB Studios, a young practice with offices in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. So after Ms. Kashper and her husband, Eugene, an entrepreneur with beverage and real estate interests both in the United States and Russia, bought the property for $6.9 million in 2006, she naturally appointed herself the principal designer.